HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies Volume 35 Number 2 Article 30 January 2016 Between Private and Public Initiatives? Private Schools in pre-1951 Tibet Alice Travers CNRS, CRCAO, Paris, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya Recommended Citation Travers, Alice. 2016. Between Private and Public Initiatives? Private Schools in pre-1951 Tibet. HIMALAYA 35(2). Available at: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya/vol35/iss2/30 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. This Research Article is brought to you for free and open access by the DigitalCommons@Macalester College at DigitalCommons@Macalester College. It has been accepted for inclusion in HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Macalester College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Between Private and Public Initiatives? Private Schools in pre-1951 Tibet Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge the support of the ANR-DFG project “Social History of Tibetan Societies” (SHTS), which provided funding for fieldtrips in India and Tibet in 2012 and 2014. I am very grateful to the editors of this volume, Catherine Warner and Arik Moran, as well as to the two anonymous reviewers, for their insightful suggestions and comments on this paper. I would like to thank Tashi Tsering from the AMI Institute for his help in locating a number of papers of the secondary literature and in finding adequate scholars and witnesses on this subject in India. I am also very thankful to the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, the Pitt Rivers Museum and the British Museum, who kindly authorized the reproduction of the five photographs. Last, my sincere gratitude goes to Tibetans in India and Tibet, named or not, who accepted to share their knowledge and memories on private schools. All interpretations, analyses but also all remaining mistakes remain solely my own. This research article is available in HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya/vol35/iss2/30 Between Private and Public Initiatives? Private Schools in Pre-1951 Tibet Alice Travers Introduction The idea that there was no other type of education The existence of an important network of private schools in pre-1951 Tibet than the religious education in pre-1951 Tibetan territory under the Ganden Phodrang delivered in monasteries is common, as the idea (Dga’ ldan pho brang) government has been so far over- that education in private schools—when their looked and its significance vastly underestimated. In a existence is acknowledged—was the preserve 2011 study of Tibetan societies by a Han sociologist for example, several authors are quoted to this effect: of a small social elite. This socio-historical study “[B]efore 1951, education was the monopoly of the pursues three main goals: first, to highlight and monasteries that provided training for the elite document the existence of a rather important to lead the country and for ecclesiastical careers. network of private schools in the first half of the Secular education was non-existent” (Karan 1976: 20th century in Lhasa and in other areas of the 71). […] “In general there were no schools beside monasteries, no education beside religion, and no Ganden Phodrang territory; second, to describe teachers besides monks” (Sun Ruoqiong 1990: 253 this system of private schools and the education it in Ma rong 2011: 281).1 provided; third, to illuminate the relationship with There are a number of reasons for these conclusions: government schools and the questioning of the among them, a tendency to underline the ‘backwardness’ Tibetan concept of ‘private education,’ by analyzing of pre-1959 Tibetan society in a certain type of studies, but also the fact that the majority of the research done on this the socio-professional profile of most teachers in topic has been published in Tibetan and Chinese.2 these private schools and their mode of student As a matter of fact, the history of Tibetan traditional ed- recruitment. The paper is based on secondary ucation and schooling has long been of interest to the Ti- literature, as well as on my own research through betans themselves both in Tibet and in exile. An ensemble interviews in Tibet and India and the reading of of detailed memoirs and research papers published since 1977 consist, on the one hand, of personal accounts of the autobiographical accounts published in these traditional educational system by Tibetan witnesses,3 and, locations. on the other hand, of papers by scholars.4 This body of work indicates not only that there were private schools Keywords: Tibetan history, social history, Lhasa, education, outside the monastic system but also that the significance schools, Tibetan society. 118 | HIMALAYA Fall 2015 of these private schools, from a social history point of system (Khri zhabs zur pa Nor bu chos ´phel 2009: 49). To view, is considerable. In a recent study (Travers 2013) I begin with, let us place private schooling in the context drew our attention to the existence in traditional Tibet of of the Tibetan educational system as a whole. All Tibetan an intermediate social group, a kind of ‘middle class’ com- studies on the topic present the traditional educational posed of government secretaries, aristocratic families and system as being made up of three kinds of distinct educa- monastic treasurers, managers and secretaries, merchants, tional systems: monastic education (dgon sde’i slob gnyer or large land-holding farmers and military officers. I have dgon pa’i slob gso), government education (gzhung gnyer slob also highlighted the role played by Tibetan private schools gso or gzhung btsugs slob grwa’i slob gso), and private educa- in educating—and perhaps even creating—this group, fo- tion (sger gnyer slob gso or sger btsugs slob grwa’i slob gso). Be- cusing on one particular aspect of the Nyarongshar (Nang cause private schools provided basic education, they were rong shag) School social organization. considered a key element of the whole system (Byang ngos pa 1993: 19). They were actually made of two distinct ele- As an extension of my ongoing research in this area, the ments: private schools with children in various numbers present paper seeks to document the general institution of (from five to a few hundred), and private tuition at home private schools in Central Tibet from a sociocultural point (either the teacher’s or the student’s home). The latter is of view. It pursues three main goals: first, to highlight the not included in the present study but was very common existence of an important network of private schools in and thus should be kept in mind if one wants to get a com- pre-1951 Tibetan territory under the Ganden Phodrang plete picture of the whole traditional education system.8 A government; second, to describe the system of private student would usually complete private schooling in three schools and the education it provided, based on existing to five years (ibid: 21). A few would then continue their secondary sources as noted above, as well as on my own studies and receive private tuition with a tutor hired by research through interviews in Tibet and India; and finally the family and/or attend a government school/training. to illuminate the relationship between the government and “private education” in pre-1959, by analyzing the so- Aside from political motivations, the significance of cio-professional profile of teachers at these private schools private education in traditional Tibet—and its impact and their mode of students’ recruitment. on society—is currently overlooked because people only consider the Lhasa schools, and then only the biggest ones. The timeframe of this study is easier to define at its end But on closer study, we learn that an important number than at its beginning: the majority of the available data of small schools, organized by private individuals, existed concerns the first half of the 20th century and can be throughout the Tibetan territory and that this education capped in 1952 with the foundation of the Lhasa Primary was not exclusively directed towards the children of a School under Chinese aegis, marking a new phase in the minority elite. history of education in Tibet that is often presented as the starting point of “modern education” in Tibet (Qangngoiba Private Schools in Lhasa 2005: 3).5 However, in the present state of our knowledge, it is difficult to date the starting point of most of the pri- The private schools set up in Lhasa were “located through- vate schools described here. Two papers by Tibetans (Chos out the Lhasa area for the sake of convenience” (Rigzin ’phel rdo rje 1985: 30-31 and Suo Qiong 2011: 107-108) try Samdup 2006: 59). Drawing on data collected in various to give some historical background to the private school primary and secondary sources in Tibetan and English, and system but they link them to the period of the Tibetan through interviews, I have compiled a list of twenty-five Empire (7th-9th centuries) without discussing more recent schools in Lhasa for the first half of the 20th century—al- data.6 They conclude that the beginning of traditional though not all of them existed during the whole period. Tibetan education, that is, monastic education, dates to the (See the list of Lhasa schools in the Appendix).9 The exact spreading of Buddhism in the 7th century, with govern- date of the founding of these schools is rarely known. To ment and private schools beginning in the 8th century.7 give a time frame to this study, let us begin with the Kirä (Skyid ras) School founded in 1890, which is considered The Network of Private Schools: An Overview of one of the oldest schools in Lhasa (Suo Qiong 2011: 109).